


Fireteam Daybreak: False Hope

by TheShadowsmiths



Series: Fireteam Daybreak [3]
Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: FireteamDaybreak, destinythegame - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-11-12 06:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11156196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheShadowsmiths/pseuds/TheShadowsmiths
Summary: Wylie's brother Nikel disappeared after Twilight Gap, and she's the only one who believes he's still alive.





	1. Doubt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cayde is given some data that may imply his survival but he refuses to admit the possibility, and Wylie loses her temper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Find this on Bungie.net** : [Bungie.net](https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/186131357?page=0&sort=0&showBanned=0&path=0)  
>  **Deviantart** : <http://fav.me/d9kdd14>  
> **Tumblr** : <http://fireteam-daybreak.tumblr.com/post/135345114623/false-hope>

“ _WHAT_ did you say…?”

The room went quiet and all eyes, save for Cayde’s, turned hesitantly toward the voidwalker-turned-sunsinger, who had stopped mid-stride and snapped back around to regard the hunter with hope burning furiously in her eyes. He whirred and groaned quietly at his poor choice of words, voice box flashed dark orange as he cursed his atrocious timing and turned his head away from her.

About ten minutes earlier, Laila had arrived for debriefing and brought along Fireteam Daybreak’s findings from Venus, per Lakshmi’s advisement. It had been a private contract but there was an unsigned signature in the encoding that the Future War Cult believed may have belonged to one of the Vanguard’s Hidden. It had become commonplace some many years ago for guardians to intercept data drops accidentally, so the Vanguard had developed a protocol to follow in the event that it happened; Guardians were to keep what they could decode and deliver the rest into their care. Laila had brought this for Ikora, thinking it belonged to one of her operatives, but the moment Cayde laid eyes on the encryption, he knew it to be one of his.

Shadowsmith data was unique- he’d developed the encryption himself when the Shadowsmiths were founded, as a way to differentiate between the Hidden and the Redjack’s signatures. He took such pride in it that every so often he’d modify the pattern, so to anyone outside of their circle, it was virtually _uncrackable_ … but this wasn’t. 

For _years_ the Vanguard had secretly been receiving anonymous intel drops from an asset identifying themselves as “Spectre”, using a Shadowsmith encryption sequence so old he hadn’t seen it used since the Battle of Twilight Gap. Andal had kept him and the rest of the Shadowsmiths in the loop and on the hunt for this “Spectre”, right up until his sudden death, but they were good at hiding their tracks and it was good intel. And Cayde couldn’t deny his fondness for the cheeky bastard, whoever they were; he liked their style, and their sass… reminded him of someone he knew. If they ever did meet one day, he’d have to buy him a drink.

But amidst his analysis, he had mistakenly cursed Spectre’s decision to use “ancient encryption pattern” out loud, in the presence of one of the sharpest and most emotionally explosive Warlocks in the Vanguard’s ranks, in the presence of the _one_ Warlock that would have meant _anything_ to.

“HEY!” she shouted a little louder this time as she stormed down the steps. “I ASKED YOU A QUESTION!”

Cayde glanced helplessly at Ikora as he searched for a way to explain the anomaly without encouraging her further, but she pressed her lips together and shook her head with a look he’d seen many times before; it was her “stop talking” face, one he normally ignored as often as it was directed at him, but this time he agreed. It would have been cruel to give grieving family false hope.

But Wylynn was scarily persistent, it had never been in her to believe that her brother had died at the Gap, and she had clung to anything that would have remotely suggested his survival. And Cayde was a gambling man, he liked to take calculated risks, so it usually took more than an angry glare or a gun in his side to make him nervous ( _hell he’d even dealt with his fair share of bloodthirsty Titans_ ), but _Wylie_ …? Wylie made his circuits twitch.

The bulbs in his eyes and throat dimmed and flashed and he hesitated for a fraction of a second ( _though it seemed like minutes_ ) before he held up a hand and attempted to stop her in her tracks. “Stand down, Warlock. This doesn’t concern you.”

“The hell it doesn’t, _Cayde_ ,” she sneered his name under her breath as Laila put herself between them and gently pushed her back onto her heels. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Wylynn, it’s not what you think-”

“No Laila,” she snapped as she withdrew from her grasp on her upper arm, “Don’t make excuses for him, I want him to repeat what he just said.”

Cayde’s eyelids shuttered half-closed and his brow-plate drew together in annoyance to mask the skip in his processes that reminded him he was uncomfortable; the corner of his mouth curled slightly. He knew better than to let anyone get the better of him, but she was challenging his integrity in front of his newfound peers and he wouldn’t stand for it. Cayde needed to make a stand if he wanted to earn respect amongst the Vanguard. 

“ _Okay _,” he started in a mocking tone as he pushed himself back from the table, reached up an arm and pushed Laila aside with a gentle nudge with the back of his forearm, and fixed sharp eyes on the Warlock. “The code’s old. I haven’t seen it used in sixteen years, but the data’s new, recent- signed by an agent with a call-name I don’t recognize.”__

____

____

“So then who could have possibly encrypted the information if not a missing _Shadowsmith_ …?” she tried, her eyes never breaking away from him, boring a hole through the back of his casing. 

Cayde rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “Another Exo, another Ghost…? Maybe one of em’ got bored and decided to screw around, I don’t know. What’s your point?”

“My _point_ is, most of them died at the Gap, and the ones that didn’t are too busy mentoring the new brood to focus on recon. Most of your scouts are young blood, their ghosts wouldn’t even have _memory_ of that encryption pattern.”

“Doesn’t mean they didn’t get nosey and pull old data out of an archive to analyze.”

“You _really_ gonna give me that shit?”

“What shit?”

“Stop avoiding the obvious answer!” she snapped and slammed her palm down on the tabletop so hard and sudden it made Ikora and Zavala jump and take a step back. The way he denied the unmistakeable evidence made her blood boil.

But Cayde kept his cool and played his cards close as Laila moved away and helped Zavala clear the room of curious ears.

“It MEANS, one of them isn’t dead.”

“We recovered every body from the Gap and laid them to rest.”

“Not every body.”

Cayde’s eyes closed and his chest whirred deep and hollow like a sigh, the orange glow in his jaw burning bright before it dimmed. They hadn’t, but they’d found enough evidence to prove there was nothing left to bury- enough to extract his final moments from his dead Ghosts’ data banks, enough to forge the Gjallarhorn she refused to carry in his memory.

“Nikel’s gone, Wylynn, you’ve seen the telemetry-”

“I SAW A SCARED LITTLE GHOST BEING DRAGGED FROM HER DYING GUARDIAN,” she shouted over him before he could say it again, “He was ALIVE when she saw him last, HE WAS STILL FIGHTING!”

Cayde eyed her hand as it balled to a quivering fist on the table, and he didn’t have to look up to know she was on the verge of tears. Her light pushed and pulled, reaching out and searching the empty air where Nikel had once stood by her; Cayde had known brotherly love like that once, before Taniks had stripped it away; the hurt was still very fresh so he understood her desperation, and his metaphorical heart ached sympathetically.

“Please…” she pleaded in a quieter, more calm tone, “Just have someone look into it. He’s alive, I know it I can feel him out there, and this just confirms it.”

“Wylie…” he hesitated with a frustrated groan, lifted a hand to his forehead and pressed his index finger and thumb into the plates above his processors, placed the other hand on his hip; he couldn’t understand how Andal had handled her prodding him like this over the years, with such a lighthearted demeanor. “I can’t waste resources on your gut. No scout has survived outside the wall without a ghost for more than a year, it’s been _sixteen_ since we last saw him… so even if he DID survive the gap, it’s highly unlikely he’s made it this long on his own.”

“Nik’s a survivor… he could have done it,” she replied firmly, unwavering in her belief.

“But still…” Cayde’s tone dropped and he lowered his eyes to her. “Even if he had broken the code and written the algorithms necessary to encode this message, he didn’t bring it back himself, he dropped it off for someone to find. He created a false identity just to communicate with us, he hasn’t come back to the city _for a reason_ , something is keeping him from coming home.”

Finally, it seemed like he’d gotten through to her. A dawning look of realization softened her glare, instead replaced it with despair. He didn’t want to, but…

“Have you thought about that…?” he asked seriously, a hint of concern in his voice. “Why hasn’t he come back? What’s he hiding from?” He could see her resolve crumble the more he elaborated, but he didn’t back down. She needed to hear it, she needed to be prepared. “We don’t even know if he’s still on our side.”

The hall fell silent as every guardian in the room, Zavala, Ikora, and Laila included, cast their eyes gravely to the floor. No one wanted to believe that Nikel could have betrayed them, Cayde included. It was an awful thing to say, but if a Guardian had been gone for so long without contact, it was certainly cause for suspicion.

“ _Don’t_ ,” she growled lowly through gritted teeth. The anger was back, this time stronger than before, the teary gloss absent from the corners of her eyes, dried by rage. “Don’t you _even dare_.”

“Are you ready to face that reality? Because if you aren’t, then you’re better off accepting his death.”

“Why don’t you find him yourself…?”

Though embarrassed to admit it, it took more than a second for Laila’s suggestion to register, and when it finally did, he did a double take. Was she really foolish enough to undermine the progress they had just made in aiding her recovery? He struggled to scold her, but could only manage to stammer out her name after an idle groan. “… L-Laila-!”

“If Cayde won’t assign one of his scouts priority of finding your brother, then why not take up the task?” she continued, ignoring his wide-eyed, dumbstruck look of frustration with a small smile. “No one knew him better than you, and I think if anyone could find him it’d be you,” she encouraged her with a sideways leer in Cayde’s direction, then to Ikora. “And as long as you’re staying true to your responsibilities, what does the Vanguard care what you do in your spare time…?”

They were astonished, all of them with the same gaping stare. Defying Cayde was not something Laila would have normally done, but she was steadfast and confident, intentionally refueling Wylynn’s resolve.

And it worked like a charm. A competitive grin crawled up into her cheeks as she relished the thought of being able to throw it in his face that he’d been wrong. It was almost impressive how little it took to restore her hope after how much it had taken to get her to think more logically about her theory. “You know what…? You’re absolutely right,” she agreed, a little scorn in her tone, then turned to him and snarled,  “ _Fuck you_ Cayde, I’ll find him myself.”

“ _Wylynn_ …!” Ikora had been known for vulgarity in her younger years, but would not stand for her Warlocks mouthing off to a commanding officer.

Her head snapped around to scowl at the woman. “It’s not like you’ve done better. You didn’t want him to say anything.”

Ikora paused. “Of course I didn’t, this isn’t the time or place to be having this conversation.”

“Uh huh, so when would that be…?” The only time the Vanguard ever left their post was to eat, sleep, or use the restroom; Cayde was the only one who left frequently, even if just to take a walk, but that was just the restlessness of hunters.

She leveled her gaze to Wylie with a commanding shift in her posture. “The next time you have a problem with one of us, ask to speak with us _privately_ … do you understand?”

Wylie suddenly felt very small, and she nodded quietly with a “Yes Mistress Ikora” before turning and leaving the hall.

Almost as soon as she was gone, the weight in the air evaporated, and they could breathe again. Cayde lifted both hands to his face and dragged them down over his cheeks dramatically before gesturing to Laila with open palms and stiff fingers. “Whyyyyyyyy would you _do_ that!? After all the time I spent-”

“Cayde,” she calmly cut him off before he could work himself up too much, tilted her head up and looked him right in the eye so he’d understand. “You went too far.”

His brow twitched once, neck doing the same which created a puzzled head tilt. He didn’t feel like he had. “But she’s been haunted by this impossible thought for too long now, she needs to reconcile with her loss-”

“You’re right, she does, it’s probably the best thing for her…” she started, but paused to make sure she had his attention, and continued the thought when he stopped to listen to the rest. “But what she needs more is hope.”

Caydes shutters dilated and he blinked twice in surprise. Amidst the chaos of the moment, he had forgotten that.

“Without hope, she has nothing to live for. Human emotions are fragile, they can’t decide to be done with their grief as easily as you and I, and I know you know that because you’re always going on in your bravado about how we’re bringing hope to the city every time we complete our missions…” she paused stepped a little closer to him and shifted her gaze from one of his eyes to the other, dropped her tone and spoke more quietly. “I know you want to help her, because you know how it feels to be in her position…”  

Cayde’s eyes turned away from her and cast a dejected look to one of Andal’s journals on the table; she was right, she was always right. In spite of his walls, to her, he was transparent.

“But she has to decide for herself what’s going to help her get through the day. Andal understood that, that’s why he let her believe Nik is still out there. You don’t necessarily have to agree with it, just let it be… you’ve done all you can to help, and at the end of the day, she’s going to believe what she wants to believe.”

He eyed her quietly and nodded in response before he looked away. “Yeah… okay.”

She gave him a reassuring smile, quiet and warm, as she lifted a hand and gave his shoulder a soft squeeze, stepped away from him and turned to Ikora, who looked like she wanted to say something.

“I know she’ll be alright, but keep an eye on her for us… will you?”

Laila smiled a little brighter, the light in her throat flashing a few times with a laugh. “Of course… We couldn’t stop her even if we wanted to, but we won’t let anything happen to her. She’ll be fine.”

With one more glance around the room, she blinked with a nod and a smile, hopped up the stairs and left to return to the hangar, but her residual light lingered, soothing and enveloping.

When she arrived Merric was asleep, sitting on a crate and slumped against the hull of the ship with his arms and ankles crossed. Laila had never seen an Exo sleep as often as he did these days, but something about it made her happy. Maybe it was because he was taking care of himself.

Laila moved the rifle that had been leaning up against the crate beside him, sat down in its place, and laid her head on his shoulder with a small contented sigh. If she was being honest, she could use a bit of a rest herself.


	2. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wylynn seeks out Rue in her library to vent and ask for her guidance about whether or not she should let go of her brother.
> 
> (Lazarus belongs to a friend of mine)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Find this on Bungie.net** : [Bungie.net](https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/186756942?page=0&sort=0&showBanned=0&path=1)  
>  **Deviantart** : <http://fav.me/d9o3feg>  
> **Tumblr** : <http://fireteam-daybreak.tumblr.com/post/137386523918/false-hope-pt-2>

Disruption of the energies within her aura’s range interrupted her train of thought with a rude jolt that shook her from her psychometric trance. The glow of her eyes faded as the blank pages of the book before her replaced the not so peaceful visions of the Ishtar Collective’s darker days.

Rue stared for a moment, disoriented and hands trembling through a white-knuckle grip, but grounded herself by whispering the names of her friends with an air of fervency, growing more desperate each time she spoke. _Laila, Merric, Dee, Wylynn…_

__

__

Her gaze scanned the room, pausing on books from the Archives and a few from Ikora’s personal library that lay open and scattered around the room on tables, chairs, some on the floor… physical copies of files from Clovis Bray’s Exoscience research set in a box next to her bookshelves, and the old, tattered book under her fingertips. Leather, dry and course- she noted the faint smell of must from the waterlogged parchment, the tired sunlight streaming in from the courtyard windows to her left, and the smell of blooming jasmine and lavender from the garden plot by the view.

_Ikora, Rahool, Arach, Hideo, Zavala, Nikel… Barom…_

__

__

But her eyes finally settled on the ancient oak at the center of the room, towering at an impressive four stories tall, and the dysphoria evaporated. If not for the help of the Warlock order, she may have never learned how to manage the dissociation that resulted from her out-of-body experiences. Their insight had been invaluable.

_The Tower… I’m in the Tower…_ Rue drew in a sharp breath and held it until the count of five, steadied herself as she exhaled evenly on the same count. It had been many lifetimes since her visions had begun, with hundreds of years behind her, and hundreds more witnessed as a spectator to the lives of strangers she’d never known. Everything she touched called to her from the Void, caressing her consciousness from the fabric of time with a longing to be remembered, stories to be told, good and bad. Memories she sympathized with so strongly, some days she found it _impossible_ to differentiate between what were and weren’t _hers_. They were random, overwhelming, horrific, and becoming more and more real every time. So real that she had begun to fear that she would one day lose herself to them. 

__

__

Light flooded the room with a warm embrace as her ghost manifested from its spot on her shelf to shake the sleep from its appendages, and Rue breathed slow and steady as she removed her hands from the pages and shut the tome with a gentle palm. Her personal time was up for the moment; Wylie’s aura was unmistakable, especially when she was worked up. Rue frowned as the idea to pretend she was still too busy to talk raced through her mind. She wasn’t ready enough for the dump she was about to unload, but her civility nagged. Wylynn was her friend, after all. If she trusted her enough to come to her with what was on her mind, she deserved her courteous consideration of her feelings.

“Are you alright?” the aubergine spined ghost asked as it orbited her shoulders sympathetically. “Would you like me to ask her to come back?”

Rue looked down and shook her head, then lifted a hand. “No… I’ll be fine.”

The door to her library flung open and rattled on its hinges with a hollow ring as it hit the wall. “GOD, the _NERVE_ of some people…” Wylynn huffed as she entered the room, muttering curses under her breath.

Rue’s eyes followed as the Warlock floated herself up to one of the half-dozen hammocks strung overhead, lit a lantern, and rolled into the rope with an annoyed growl; the tree gave a small creak at the drop of her body weight but held steady. “You should be more careful up there… we don’t want to disturb _Fjörgynn_ ,” she scolded as she collected the books and shifted around her notes.

“Fjörgynn can _bite me_ ,” she hissed without turning to look at her, mumbling “ _Why did you even name a tree anyway…?_ ” under her breath as an afterthought.

This was typical behavior for her.. deflecting, waiting until someone asked what was wrong before she came out with the truth. Most would have interpreted it as a childish cry for attention, but Rue knew better; she understood the need to preserve her pride, to want help but not want to look weak by asking for it. For being so fierce, Wylynn’s ego was awfully fragile.

Rue sighed, set the items in her arms into a box and looked up at the back of her jeweled, black robes. She could feel the tremors of her body in the air as Icarus hovered, hoping to soothe her with his presence. “What happened?” she asked, hesitation in her tone.

“ _Cayde. Cayde_ happened.”

Rue’s Void flared around her, thick and permeating, and she immediately understood; that phrase was universal Warlock code for “Can you _believe_ this asshole?” She had her own reasons to dislike Cayde, but wouldn’t usually allow her own opinion to taint another’s view if they held him in high regard ( _as Laila and Merric did_ ); in this instance, she didn’t bridle her tongue.

“And you’re _surprised_?” The words came out sarcastic, dripping.

Wylynn’s brows popped up and she half-turned to glance at her out of the corner of her eye. She was surprised, but not by Cayde’s behavior. “I just didn’t know he could be so unsympathetic.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… I overheard him talking to Laila about something… Shadowsmith encryption she and Merric pulled out a terminal on Venus…”

“Okay…?”

“… he said it was outdated, that it hadn’t been used since the Gap…”

“Did he say who dropped the data?”

Wylynn shrugged as she played with the sleeve of her robes. “Some anonymous tipster calling themselves Spectre…”

Rue froze and her jaw locked tight- she shouldn’t have known, but she was aware that Cayde had been receiving intel from an anonymous source… and she knew who it it was. Spectre had been doing work for her too, tracking supercell movement on Venus and collecting data on Vex technology. It was by pure luck that they had met in the Reef, but Nik had asked her to keep his secret in exchange for any help he could provide outside of his obligations to the Queen. And although she hated keeping it a secret from Wylie, she understood his reasons and agreed to his terms… but with how close she was to the truth, she wondered if Wylie would find out on her own. Nik would either need to be more careful or more brazen. 

She swallowed before responding, “So you assumed it _had_ to be Nikel.”

“It was the only explanation.”

Rue nodded quietly as she continued.

“So I called him on it… we got into it…” Her hands fussed nervously with the plating over her wrists, not wanting to recall what came next, but she could feel Rue growing anxious as she traced a slow circle around the trunk of the tree. She sighed. “… and he said that even if Nik was still alive, there’s no way of knowing if he’s still on our side… that he hadn’t returned to the tower for a reason…”

Rue’s throat clenched and her stomach twisted over itself, knot after knot from her chest to her belly. He was right… as much as she hated to think about it, and as much as she hated to admit that she would _agree_ with Cayde about anything, when it came down to it he wasn’t stupid, she couldn’t deny that. He was a _Hunter_ , and hunters were survivors- cautious, distrustful, intel-driven, always anticipating and preparing for what could go wrong. His scouts were the first line of defense against the darkness. Cayde might not have known it, but his instincts were on-point.

After a moment of silence and a disgusted groan, she forced out a painful admission. “He’s got a point…”

It was Wylynn’s turn to bristle, eyes wide and lip curling. “ _What_!? You can’t be serious!”

“But I _am_ , Wylynn, I know he’s your brother, and I know it hurts to even consider that a possibility because you know him and you love him, but if this had been _any other guardian_ you would have thought the same.”

“But Cayde knows him too-”

“Cayde’s the _Vanguard_ now,” she cut in, raised her voice with an exasperated tone. “He’s been thrown into a position where he’s forced to constantly think objectively about the bigger picture. He has to put the safety of the city above every other guardian, himself included, because we’re all pawns in the grand scheme of this war. He doesn’t have the luxury of giving the benefit of the doubt to friends exhibiting questionable behavior.”  

The room went quiet, only a soft flutter in the air as Socrates passed, circled the room to organize the mess she’d made in the last few days. Rue’s hand brushed against the trunk of the tree and traced the imperfections in the bark, looked at the way it had split, healed, and twisted to adapt. It had fought to survive just as much as any of them. 

“Look…” she paused with a sigh and crossed her arms, turned and leaned back against the Oak, and tilted her head up to look at her. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t see her, the walls vaulted her voice in circular echoes spiraling toward the canopy. “If Nik were here right now he’d listen; but he isn’t, and sixteen years is a _long time_ to be away from home without so much as a hello, or a message to tell us he’s alive, so he has to assume the worst.”

“So why then…? Why hasn’t he come back?” Her question was silent, nearly a whisper.

Rue pushed back the sickness that pounded in her stomach as she fabricated the possibilities. “If he survived, it’s probable he suffered severe trauma and doesn’t remember the tower… or it could be he’s fighting his own wars and doesn’t want to get the city involved… but it’s entirely possible he just doesn’t want to come home.”

Wylynn paused to shift uncomfortably; the thought that he would abandon her of his own accord made her truly sick. “I think I prefer the betrayal theory…” At least that had potential for closure.

Rue reached up to grasp one of the low-hanging branches and launched herself upward, glided to the hammock across from her, then sat down and leaned over in her direction to look her in the eye. The last thing Rue wanted was to see her continue to hurt, because she had already been hemorrhaging hope since he had gone missing; but she’d made a promise. “I know you don’t want to believe it any more than I do…” she started with a soft tone that turned sharp, compelling. “So _don’t_. Just because the idea’s out there doesn’t mean you have to accept it as truth.”

The discomfort in her eyes faded into profound gratitude, awe, then sadness, then concern. The words had come out as if she’d recited them a thousand times before, as if she wished desperately that someone had said them to her sooner.

“Your strongest assets are your integrity and your unwavering faith. So use them to your advantage and decide what you want to be true, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Cayde’s opinion doesn’t really matter anyway… neither does Ikora’s, or Zavala’s, or anyone else’s. If you believe he’s out there, then believe it and don’t take their skepticism personally.”

She nodded but remained quiet as the new guilt ached in the pit of her gut. Eyes watched her with a newfound respect as she lay down into the rope weave and stared up at the ceiling with what Wylynn had now realized was feigned serenity; she realized just how much Rue had suffered in silence as she gave everything to care for the people around her, and it made her feel weak.

“Rue…” Wylynn’s gaze was sullen, downcast, before it moved to look her way after hesitating. “Is that how you deal with it…?”

Rue’s eyelids faltered, just a bit, but they screamed her answer. “Yes… and no,” she started, eyes shifting away from her as her head turned to follow. “I miss Barom every day…” Fingers curled up around her elbows and shifted up her arms to her shoulders as her eyes fell shut. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to bring him back, but I can’t trust what my heart is telling me and I know it.”

Wylynn frowned, sadness washing over her. “Why not…? Don’t you think he’s alive…? Aren’t you trying to find him?”

“Yes, I do… and I am… but right now he’s not here, and I have no way of proving he’s alive, to myself or to anyone else,” she answered, respectively. “So to me, hope is irrelevant; until I find evidence to support what I feel, it’s just unnecessary pain.”

Her brow hardened, trying to understand how she could _possibly_ choose to believe the things that were coming out of her mouth. “But, doesn’t that _upset you_?”

Rue didn’t answer right away; after everything she’d just done to help build her up, she knew her truth would only hurt. “No,” she replied evenly, “And I’ll tell you why.”

She could see her choking back words and tears as she waited for her to continue.

“I do believe he’s alive, and I am working on finding him…” Rue rolled over and leveled her gaze with her. “But it’s simple- either he’ll come back, or he won’t. If I see him again, I’ll be _over the moon_ , but if I don’t, I don’t want to have been so destroyed by grief that I was never able to move on. It’s not what he would have wanted… and it’s not what Nikel would have wanted either.”

Her words had cut deep to the heart, but despite all of the fighting she had done against the truth, for fear of betraying him, Wylynn finally understood. Her head rolled back into the hammock and reached out to grasp her little yellow ghost with a gentle hand, what was left of her security in this second life of hers, and it sunk down onto her chest heavily in mutual want.

“They both fought too hard for us to give up simply because they’re gone- they wouldn’t want us to turn against our comrades for moving on without them, and they would certainly not want us to wallow in self pity, they’d want us to be _happy_.”

“Yeah…”

The silence that followed was comforting, calm, easy to be content to just lay there and be. As radically different as Rue’s coping methods were from hers, Wylynn admitted to herself that she could have been handling her anguish better than she had been.

Half an hour passed, during which time they had almost fallen asleep. Rue stirred as she sensed footsteps down the hall, turned over and blinked down at Lazarus as he knocked on the door.

“Wylie? You in here?” he asked as he listened intently for any sort of movement in the room. “Laila says you’ve been gettin’ into trouble again, so I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

Rue motioned for her to “go ahead” as Wylie sat up in her hammock and pushed herself over the edge with a drop that startled him, and softened her landing with a short glide and an enamored grin. 

Laz was surprised at her demeanor, he’d expected worse after the story he’d been told, but the vibration of her light was different from its usual mania laced with cyanide- it was eager, clear and strong, without the false airs she hid behind when she was walking an emotional tightrope. This was the Wylie he loved to be around, and he was relieved. 

Hands moved to her hips as her fingertips traced the backs of his hands, up his arms, to his shoulders and cheek, and she cupped it fervently with a warm palm, eyes tracing the angles of his face as he pulled her close. 

“Seems to me you’re doin’ just fine though.”

“Better, yeah,” she admitted absently with a smirk and a gentle kiss on the cheek, whispered into his ear, “but thanks for checkin’ up on me, Sunspots… you’re a real doll.”

Laz chuckled, turned his cheek into hers and wrapped both arms around her, one higher than the other. “Did you _really_ just call me “doll”…?”

The sunsinger rolled her eyes and gave a half-hearted huff as she grinned and pulled away from him. “Give me a minute and we’ll get out of here…” she promised, dragging her claw-like nails across his scarred palms as she moved back to Rue, who had joined her on the ground. For a moment she turned her attention back to the tree, pressed a hand to the trunk in solemn silence. “I didn’t mean it, you know…”

“I’m sure Fjörgynn already knows.”

A quiet, thankful smile beamed back at her, then back to the trunk.

“We’ll be here anytime you need someone.”

“Thanks Rue,” she whispered as she started to turn back to Laz, but stopped and turned at the threshold. “When do you think you’ll be ready to start coming with us again?”

She looked down, took a step back and shook her head, uncertainty ringing clear. “I don’t know…”

“Well… when you are, I’ll be glad to have you along.”

Rue’s face contorted, struck by a sharp pang of fear mixed with gratitude, but by the time she could look up to thank her, Wylynn was gone. Her Void rang hollow, lonely, even with Socrates and Fjörgynn beside her, the room was suddenly too devoid of life.

With a nervous twitch, she turned on heel and strode to a shelf on the wall, pulled down a large tome on the Ahamkara and traced the fossil woven into the cover with her fingertips. Her eyes began to blur, dark spots in the corner of her vision that grew and expanded until shapes of light took form, and she watched them fly, free and majestic, before they had been hunted to extinction by her kind. She would never be alone, not when surrounded by so many memories.


End file.
